randian - Spotlight on artistic photography: the second Photo Shanghai launches in September 2015

2015.05.27 Wed, by Translated by: Fei Wu

Spotlight on artistic photography: the second Photo Shanghai launches in September 2015

Following the success of its inaugural exhibition in 2014, the second “Photo Shanghai” fair will be launched on September 10, 2015 at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre. Organized by the World Photography Organization and Montgomery Exhibition Ltd., the exhibition will be open to the public from September 11-13. Fifty galleries from cities including New York, London, Paris, Berlin and Tokyo will present works from over 500 master photographers/artists as well as up-and-comers from East and West. Alexander Montague-Sparey will once again be heading Photo Shanghai in 2015. He has invited Zhang Peili—“the Father of video and new media art in China”—to curate a “Moving Image” program with video as the main medium. The program will be housed in a special video display space at the exhibition. The exhibition will also feature events including a “Museums Summit”, a “Collectors’ Forum”, book signings and interviews with artists. Further details will be released in July.

Galleries confirmed to return this year include CAMERA WORK Photogalerie (Berlin), Flowers Gallery (London, New York), Magnum Photos, ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore), Pékin Fine Arts (Beijing), Magda Danysz Gallery (Shanghai, Paris), and others. This year’s new galleries will include Blindspot Gallery (Hong Kong), Gagosian (New York, London, Paris, Athens, Geneva, Los Angeles, Rome, and Hong Kong), Taka Ishii Gallery (Tokyo, New York, and Paris) and The Wapping Project Bankside Gallery (London). Notably, Gagosian Gallery will be organizing a “museum quality” solo show of the renowned American artist Taryn Simon’s “Birds of the West Indies” project, featuring all 190 works from the series. The Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris is currently holding a retrospective exhibition for Simon, who has been lauded as one of the top contemporary photo artists in the world for her unique approach to combining images, text and graphic design. In addition, Photo Shanghai will feature highlights from heavy hitters including Nobuyoshi Araki, Birdhead, Guy Bourdin, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliot Erwitt, Yang Fudong, Candida Höfer, Horst P. Horst, Axel Hüette, André Kertész, Steven Klein, Gustave Le Gray, Daidō Moriyama, Vik Muniz, Helmut Newton, Erwin Olaf, Irving Penn, Paolo Roversi and Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Sandy Angus, joint founder of the former Art HK (now transformed into Art Basel Hong Kong), Chairman of Montgomery Worldwide and the World Photography Organzsation says: “Collecting photography is an entry point into collecting other forms of art. Photo Shanghai builds a bridge between collectors from China and Asia and the very best early and contemporary masterpieces.”

September will be a busy month for art in Shanghai, with the launch of West Bund Art & Design (Sep 8-13) and Art in the City (Sep 11 – 14). In addition, the Shanghai Center of Photography and Qiao Zhibing’s “Oil Tank Contemporary Art Center” (a 50,000 square meter parcel of greenery containing five aerospace oil tanks which border the city’s “West Bund Cultural Corridor”) will also join the Long Museum, and Yuz Museum in the ranks of Shanghai’s art spaces and museums. The exhibitions and events at various museums/art centers have launched a mad grab for audiences in this “new historical period”. Most galleries will be presenting their large annual exhibitions in September; naturally, it follows that most collectors will have full calendars come autumn.